Front Row; 60 Minutes To a Foil Dress

By Eric Wilson

Published: October 26, 2006

AT 5 p.m. on Tuesday, several hundred members of an underground irregular networking group called LVHRD -- as in Live Hard, minus vowels -- received a message inviting them to ''bring one roll of tin foil to LVHRD fashion duel tonite!''

They must have had nothing better to do. By 9 p.m., a crowd was spilling onto the curb of Great Jones Street at Broadway, where said duel was taking place inside a four-month-old designer boutique, Caravan. Erin Isakov, a cute new designer from the Lower East Side who calls her label Erin Snow, was facing off against Laurel Wells, a designer in Brooklyn of party frocks, in a ''Project Runway''-style challenge.

As the stars of the party, they were asked to make a dress entirely from foil and neon duct tape, suitable for a first lady to wear, within an hour. Most of the guests, meanwhile, used the scraps to create accessories, like one woman who formed a hat into a fan-tailed swan, as if she were carrying leftovers on her head, or a young man who made a giant foil clock and foil rings, Flavor Flav style.

''The point is to get interesting people together,'' said Ben Nabors, an events organizer at the creative agency thehappycorp, which has produced similar LVHRD challenges in dance and dramatic arts with little notice. ''On a Tuesday night, you will find people who work in architecture, advertising, education and magazines huddled around a window to watch people creating.''

Doug Jaeger, the founder of thehappycorp, had covered his bald head with silver paint, which rendered him rather humorless as he suggested the group's motivation was ''to destroy the verticalization of industry.''

The event highlighted the fascination with the creative process, as the crowd seemed mesmerized by the tiniest adjustments. Ms. Isakov was taping tiers of sunburst-pleated foil to an Oscar de la Renta-esque ball gown, while Ms. Wells attached teardrop-shape wads to an improbably modern cocktail dress with a sculptured bustier. Her assistant was Alison Kelly, formerly on ''Project Runway.''

Chelsea Peretti, a comic and actress, analogized the dresses to selections suitable for Hillary Clinton, in Ms. Isakov's design, versus Michelle Obama, from Ms. Wells. Wishful thinking, perhaps, but Ms. Wells was named the victor.

Photo: QUICK COUTURE -- Erin Isakov at work. (Photo by Shiho Fukada for The New York Times)